Least favorite episode


What is your least favorite episode of the original series, and why?

For myself, "The Magnificent Warriors", followed closely by "The Young Lords" are the two episodes that have not aged well and are almost embarrassing to watch today. The problem with these episodes is they were trying too hard to appeal to very young children, and the results were just a little too cute and endearing. It's episodes like these that help make the average person remember the entire series as "cheesy".

I know some people are not crazy about some of the later episodes (especially "Experiment in Terra", "Murder on the Rising Star", and "Take the Celestra"), but I've never had a serious problem with any of those in comparison with the first two I mentioned.

And please, let's completely exclude the Ron Moore series and Galactica 1980 from the discussion.


Subversive: a clever synonym for self-congratulatory, generally used when attempting to justify one's guilty pleasures.

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"The young lords". Terrible! Terrible! Terrible! The silly rhyme, those annoying kids, Audrey Landers, the feathers! Terrible!

I think it's the only episode that I would never watch out of my own free will. I can find something good/fun in all others, but that one just..... (shiver)

I like "the magnificent warriors" BECAUSE it's so cheesy. The way Adama is trying to court Siress Belloby is amusing. He was so out of his element... and I loved that it gave us a chance to see Adama/Apollo/Boxey together. And after the drama on 'Gun on the ice-planet Zero' it was nice to have something 'lighter' to watch, but "The young lords" was just plain stupid.

I have mixed feelings about 'Greetings from Earth'. I just don't like Michael/Sarah, at all, but I loved Hector & Vector and the Eastern Alliance guys. And it had Lloyd Bochner as Leiter.

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Thanks for your response.

1) I agree "The Young Lords" is terrible, and you captured just what is wrong with it in one sentence. I think Glen Larson really liked this episode, however, because it was included among the episodes that were novelized, although the title was changed to "The Young Warriors".

2) You also captured a major element of what is wrong with "The Magnificent Warriors". Having a dignified but aging warrior like Adama attempt to win the favor of a character played by Brett Somers for comedic effect was in extremely poor taste, even for the 1970s. No wonder Lorne Greene demanded the salary he did. And while I agree that the interplay between Adama/Apollo/Boxey was nicely done, the groan-inducing final scene absolutely spoils everything. It just amazes me that these two very weak episodes were shown consecutively between two of the best episodes: "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" and "The Living Legend".

3) I have no major problems with "Greetings from Earth" (although I always felt Hector and Vector were only there to pad out the episode), but I think by the time this episode was filmed they were rushing to finish them as fast as possible and some poor casting and production decisions were made. I too liked the "all-powerful" Eastern Alliance.


Subversive: a clever synonym for self-congratulatory, generally used when attempting to justify one's guilty pleasures.

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My least favourite episode is also The Young Lords. The story in itself wasn't bad, but it probably would have worked better if they hadn't used kids as the protagonists. There were just too many cringe-worthy moments with the kids reciting the battle plan, Kyle blowing the conch, Specter and Baltar's mutual flattery, pinning the wings on Kyle, etc, etc...just too many to list here. I usually skip this episode whenever do a Galactica marathon. I had a crush on Audrey Landers, but even that wasn't enough to save this drek.

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I agree "The Young Lords" was cheesy and had annoying parts. Otherwise, I thought it had a not-bad climax. The siress in "The Magnificent Warriors" vaguely reminded me of a pre-Luaxana Troy. Was this the episode where later, they land on a planet where the natives were terrorized by these sort of pig people on horseback?

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1) BG could not resist the temptation of having at least one of the Landers sisters on the show just like many other shows from that time could not. Being a teen during a portion of the 1970's the Landers sisters seriously raised my pulse rate. The biggest problem was as others stated it was developed as a "kiddie" episode.
2) Brett Somers was brought in because she was a hot commodity on Match Game which was hugely popular at that time.
3) GFE was more meh than it should have been but it is known Larson really did not want to go the weekly series route and it showed here as the idea and the production were less than fully fleshed out.

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Definitely The Young Lords. Although Audrey Landers was pretty sexy in it.

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"Fire in Space". Just awful.

-TK

"I've always admired atheists; I think it takes a lot of faith." -Dr. Joel Fleischman

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"Fire in Space" had some interesting ideas, so for me it remains a watchable episode. The real problem with it is WAY too much Muffit. I've sometimes wondered if Lorne Greene had another commitment away from the set when they were filming this, which gave them the opportunity to have Adama incapacitated for most of the show.


Subversive: a clever synonym for self-congratulatory, generally used when attempting to justify one's guilty pleasures.

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I have to agree with everyone on Young Lords. The other one for me that I have a hard time sitting through is Greetings From Earth. Hector and Vector doing their little song and dance makes it like trying to watch SW Episode I with Jar Jar Binks.

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Fire in Space is definately the worst because we don't watch BG to see The Towering Inferno.

The Young Lords is bad because it makes a total joke out of the Cylons, but then again, most of the series did this.

Magnificient Warriors is bad because Brett Somers should never have been allowed anywhere near this show.

Greetings From Earth I thought was pretty good, except the title -- there was no Greetings and no Earth.

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I did like that Greetings From Earth introduced the Eastern Alliance which brought a fresh angle to the series at that point, but damn that Hector and Vector!

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I always hit the fast forward button during that scene. Just too much of an eye-roller for me.

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Yup. Like TNG's "Disaster", every episode that features the ship in a near-destructed form has always been bad and poorly thought out...

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"Fire in Space." It's just boring. And the less said about "mushies" the better.

Even "The Magnificent Warriors" is not boring, and in some small way it may have helped to inspire Firefly.

And "The Young Lords" at least broadened our knowledge of the Cylons by introducing Specter and revealing that there can be intense rivalry among the IL series. And my 14-year-old self would forgive this episode many things for Audrey's sake.

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"The Magnificent Warriors" is my least favorite hands down. Actually, I hate it. The whole premise of Adama being blackmailed into courting one of the fleet;s own passengers (essential a subject of Adama for all the authority he seemed to have) in order to save the lives of the entire colony was ludicrous enough to make it horrible, but on top of that it was just poorly executed anyway.

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My least favorite is probably "The Lost Warrior" a.k.a. Apollo ends up in a Space Western episode. I thought it was very cookie cutter and just felt like an excuse to do 'cowboys in space'. And not very well, at that.



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For me, the original BSG episodes break out into 3 main categories, and my liking of them is also paralleled by the category:

EPIC/CLASSIC/CORE (10):
Saga of a Star World (miniseries)
Lost Planet of the Gods
Gun on Ice Planet Zero
Living Legend
Hand of God

INTER-FLEET INTRIGUE (8):
Fire in Space
War of the Gods
Man w/ Nine Lives
Murder o/t Rising Star
Greetings From Earth p1
Baltar's Escape
Take the Celestra

FOREIGN PLANET (6):
Lost Warrior
Long Patrol
Magnificent Warriors
Young Lords
Greetings From Earth p2
Experiment in Terra

So for me, I always liked the Core Epics the best, the Inter-Fleets are ok occasionally, and I stay away from the weaker "guest planet of the week" ones.

The only exception would be Experiment in Terra; its useful to have a reference look at the late 70's 'domestic-futuristic' look, seen also in Logan's Run and Saturn 3.

I agree with many of the other posts that Young Lords and Magnificent Warriors were the weakest/silliest/poorest executed of all.

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Like your list but, to be honest, I'd put 'War of the Gods' with the Epic/Classic/Core ones, but that's a personal opinion. :)

I agree that the 'foreign planets' ones are the weakest, though "The lost warrior" is one of my favorites, but I'll be the first to admit that it's because Apollo-centric and Apollo is my favorite character on the show. The story was rather predictable though, but I was amused by the 'gun-fight at Midnight' between Red Eye and Apollo. Plus, La Certa was good 'bad guy'. The interaction between La Certa and Apollo was certainly entertaining.

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Thank you for your response. I really like your three episode categories, but I must agree with the other responder: "War of the Gods" belongs in EPIC/CLASSIC/CORE. That 2-parter is downright unforgetable, and in spite of its darker/weirder tone, it absolutely epitomizes what the show was all about.



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I can see that. War of the Gods is definitely one of the most popular episodes and probably the largest mystery of the show. The notion of a crashed vessel in a seemingly paradise environment with a personified evil monitored by benevolent overseers is an in important notion, and the episode is great way to ice-break this particular situation of circumstances.

For the purposes of these categories, I put War of the Gods in Inter-Fleet because, while it is certainly the most cerebral of the episodes, it is a story drama played out 99% within the confines the fleet.
(the cylon world is seen too briefly, and they do not spend a significant amount of time on the foreign planet)

Purely to my own personal view, the "classic" Battlestar story is being on the run, barely one step ahead, and blasting it out with the Cylons.
(in the podcast to the new series Hand of God episode, Ron Moore refers to this as the "big mac" storyline.)

But I have no problem with War o/t Gods being highly esteemed and placed high in the rankings of "the good ones". True dat.

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"Experiment in Terra" This whole episode was completely different from the rest of the series- almost as if it was a pilot for a new show. And making Apollo take Charlie Watts's place- including physical appearance- was hokey too (Yes, I'm aware that it was the forerunner of Quantum Leap...). The whole episode didn't make sense. I mean, the Seraphs couldn't find anyone in all of Terra's territories- someone who knew the history of their world- to impersonate Charlie? That person would at least have an undersanding of what was going on. Why did the Seaphs need Apollo? To spout off a story that would sound crazy to the Terrans- thereby making it more difficult to achieve their objective? What was their objective anyway? For Apollo to give a speech about what happened to the Colonies and how the Nationalist shouldn't blindly trust the Eastern Alliance? Wouldn't that become blatantly obvious after the EA launched its attack? It did to the most stupid character of this episode- the president all but wets his pants when told the EA double crossed him and that nukes were on the way. But then the Galactica shows up and uses a force field technology that was never used before and never seen again to destroy the all missiles!! Can you say Deus Ex Galactica!? So what was the point of the speech? It didn't prevent or solve anything! It was completely unnecessary! And what's up with John? He changes the whole nature of the Seraphs. Why didn't they appear as humans in War of the Gods? Where was John then? A wise, mysterious race beyond the comprehension of the Galacticans (themselves at least a 1000 years ahead of us) are reduced to a fussy, English butler!!

I could keep going, but I fear that I'm becoming unglued as I write this! LOL! As a nine year old, I didn't like this episode but could't articulate why. Now as an adult- I can't stop!

Even some of the less well received stand alone episodes had something to offer- if nothing more than character interactions that bonded them together. For example, in "The Young Lords", Adama is suffering from some sort of illness and is bed ridden. Boxey comes to visit him and they share a Grandfather/Grandson story reading moment that was touching and showed Adama's love for the boy. This episode has nothing like that.

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Do you mean "The Long Patrol" or "Murder on the Rising Star"?

(Both episodes featured an imprisoned Starbuck.)


In Memorium: Chris Squire 1948-2015

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